But he'd just fallen in love and wasn't so sure he really wanted it. It took a weekend of soul searching to realise that this would be the experience of a lifetime.From covering India's endearingly over-the-top response to the death of cricketing legend Don Bradman to being the only Australian journalist in Afghanistan on September 11 2001, Lost in Transmission is Harley's exciting, often moving, funny and disarmingly honest account of the three years he spent, lurching from one hair-raising misadventure to the next, reporting from one of the most exotic and, as events unfurled, alarming corners of the planet.Shifting effortlessly between the serious, the sublime and the ridiculous, this is the story of a stranger at something of a loss in an even stranger land - a young man struggling to comprehend and comment on life in a part of the world that never quite makes sense...

    At the same time they are intended to reach other levels.

    At eighteen she witnessed the civil unrest of the 1979 Iranian revolution and continued to live in the Islamic Republic during its most volatile times, including the Iran-Iraq War. In a deeply intimate and personal story, Saper recounts her privileged childhood in pre-revolutionary Iran and how she gradually became aware of the paradoxes in her life and community—primarily the disparate religions and cultures.In 1979 under the Ayatollah regime, Iran became increasingly unfamiliar and hostile to Saper. Seemingly overnight she went from living a carefree life of wearing miniskirts and attending high school to listening to fanatic diatribes, a Jewish girl forced to veil her body as the rest of the country, and hiding in the basement as bombs fell all over the city. She fled to the United States in 1987 with her husband and children after witnessing her six-year-old daughter’s indoctrination into radical politics at school. At the heart of Saper’s story is a harrowing and instructive tale of how extremist ideologies seized a Westernized, affluent country and transformed it into a fundamentalist society.

    These stories are unique in time and circumstance, yet they address a common dilemma: how to reconcile America's mythologized "promise" with its more complex reality. New to the collection are Sherman Alexie, Michelle Cliff, Edwidge Danticat, Junot Diaz, Chitra Divakaruni, Jewelle Gomez, Thomas King, Bruce Morrow, Agnes Rossi, and David Wong Louie. They join Toni Cade Bambara, Richard Bausch, Marita Bonner, Nash Candelaria, Sandra Cisneros, Louise Erdrich, Mei Mei Evans, Oscar Hijuelos, Gish Jen, LeRoi Jones/Amiri Baraka, Kim Yong Ik, Monfoon Leong, Bernard Malamud, Paule Marshall, Nicholasa Mohr, Toshio Mori, Bharati Mukherjee, Mikhail Naimy, Tahira Naqvi, Gregory Orfalea, Grace Paley, Jeanne Schinto, Leslie Marmon Silko, Michael Stephens, Sui Sin Far, Alice Walker, and Hisaye Yamamoto—making this, once again, the most authoritative and useful multicultural collection available.

    Lebanon," was killed by a massive explosion as he drove along the Beirut seafront on Valentine's Day in 2005. A business entrepreneur, who rose from nothing to become one of the most powerful men in Lebanese politics, Hariri's assassination has incited outrage and suspicion. Nicholas Blanford investigates Hariri's past, inextricably linked with that of Lebanon, and uncovers a murky world of shifting alliances between businesses, the military, politicians and diplomats. Based on exclusive interviews with key players, he traces the last weeks of Hariri's life, and reveals who stood to gain from his death. He assesses its impact on Lebanese politics including the withdrawal of Syrian troops, Hezbollah and the peace process. Full of intrigue, shady characters, and suspense, Killing Mr Lebanon brings to light what the Lebanese people have clamored for since Valentine's Day 2005: 'al haqiqa' - the truth.

    One day, he promised to take her there so she could meet her half-sister, Bachanu, who had stayed behind. But at the age of sixteen - as she so vividly related in her bestseller Shame - Jasvinder ran away from home to escape a forced marriage. Her parents disowned her. 'Shame travels...' her father told her. Although her mother took all her other daughters to meet the extended family in the Punjab, Jasvinder was never allowed to go. With her own daughter about to marry, Jasvinder decides to challenge thirty years of rejection by going to India herself. She wants to explore her roots and to see for herself the place her parents called home until the day they died. What Jasvinder finds in India and what she learns changes the way she sees the world, and has important lessons for all of us. SHAME TRAVELS is not only a gripping and revealing quest, but also an inspirational journey of the heart.

    It includes an epilogue written, just before the author's death, in the light of recent events in Afghanistan.

    Farivar, who was born into a long line of religious and political leaders who have shaped his nation’s history for centuries, fled to Pakistan with his family and came of age in refugee schools. At eighteen, he defied his parents and returned home to join the jihad, fighting beside not only the Afghan mujahideen but also Arab and Pakistani volunteers. When the Soviets withdrew, Farivar moved to America and attended the prestigious Lawrenceville School, Harvard, and ultimately became a journalist in New York. In this dramatic and timely memoir, Farivar draws on his unique experience as a native Afghan, a former mujahideen fighter, and a longtime U.S. resident to provide unprecedented insight into the recent collision between Islam and the West. He paints a vibrant portrait of his family and his nation’s history, exposes the world of militant Islam by taking us deep inside the madrassas, vividly recounts his experiences on the battlefield at Tora Bora and elsewhere, and movingly conveys the culture shock of a Muslim living in contemporary America.

    

    One Israeli soldier is killed and another is kidnapped. Wounded, in a state of shock, the hostage loses hold of reality and forgets everything, even his own name. In this poignant novel, Hubert Haddad makes Falastin a modern Antigone: proud, untamed and the victim of mans cruelty. Reflecting the beauty of the setting in his style, he models a modern tragedy in all its horror and absurdity.

    This memoir is Goldin’s passionate and painful account of her childhood in a poor Jewish household and her emigration to the United States in 1975. As she recalls trips to the market and the mikvah, and as she evokes ritual celebrations like weddings, Goldin chronicles her childhood, her extended family, and the lives of the women in her community in Shiraz, a southern Iranian city. Her memoir details her parents’ "courtship" (her father selected her mother from a group of adolescent girls), her mother’s lonely life as a child-bride, and Goldin’s childhood home which was presided over by her paternal grandmother. Goldin’s memoir conveys not just the personal trauma of growing up in a family fraught with discord but also the tragic human costs of religious dogmatism. In Goldin’s experience, Jewish fundamentalism was intensified by an Islamic context. Although the Muslims were antagonistic to Jews, their views on women’s roles and their treatment of women influenced the attitude and practices of some Iranian Jews. In this brave and dispassionate portrayal of a little-known corner of Jewish life, Farideh Goldin confronts profound sadness yet captures the joys of a child’s wonder as she savors the scenes and textures and scents of Jewish Iran. Readers share her youthful adventures and dangers, coming to understand how such experiences shape her choice.

    Emma Duncan, a hypochondriac with memory problems, and her orphaned fianc

    But one day in 2001 Helle's idyllic existence was shattered. She returned home from a shopping trip one evening to find that her children, who should have been safely tucked in their beds, had disappeared. It didn't take Helle long to discover that her Saudi Arabian husband had taken them away to live in his home country. With her children thousands of miles away in totally unfamiliar surroundings, Helle drew upon her remarkable courage and set off for the desert in a desperate attempt to find her beloved boys. Her journey was filled with drama, danger, excitement, and sorrow. In the astonishing struggle that followed Helle was reduced to catching occasional, snatched glimpses of her children as they were taken to and from school in Jeddah. She took a job at an international school in the city and began her campaign for access. After a series of dramatic twists and turns, Helle was reunited forever with her boys. This fascinating and gripping story cannot fail to touch any reader's heart and is packed with adventure, heartache, and joy.

    It seems the men are on a single mission to seek a recent kidnap victim, but in truth all three have very different aims in the besieged town, and each keep a dark secret from the others. Greed, ambition - and guilt - are what separates their individual motivations, but a single miscalculation could bring an end to them all . . .

    On one hand, it's a tale of the crusades, as told from the Islamic side, where Shi'a and Sunni are as intent on killing Ismaili Muslims as they are crusaders. In self-defense, the Ismaili's develop an elite band of highly trained killers called Hashshashin (Assassins) whose missions are launched from their mountain fortress of Alamut. But, it's also the story of a French boy, who is captured and forced into the alien world of the assassins. Forbidden love for a princess is intertwined with sinister plots and self-sacrifice, as the hero, and his two companions discover treachery and then attempt to evade the ruthless assassins of Alamut who are sent to hunt them down. It's a sweeping saga that takes you across 12th century Persia and Palestine, over vast snow covered mountains, through the frozen wastes of the winter plateau, and into the fabulous cites of Hamadan, Isfahan, and the Kingdom of Jerusalem. "A brilliant first novel, worthy of Bernard Cornwell at his best."